Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sam, Dylan, Pukdee, Rattana, Jeong, Daniel P., Byun, Yewon, Kolter, J. Zico
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.13410
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917594838073344
author Sam, Dylan
Pukdee, Rattana
Jeong, Daniel P.
Byun, Yewon
Kolter, J. Zico
author_facet Sam, Dylan
Pukdee, Rattana
Jeong, Daniel P.
Byun, Yewon
Kolter, J. Zico
contents Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) have recently gained popularity due to their ability to quantify model uncertainty. However, specifying a prior for BNNs that captures relevant domain knowledge is often extremely challenging. In this work, we propose a framework for integrating general forms of domain knowledge (i.e., any knowledge that can be represented by a loss function) into a BNN prior through variational inference, while enabling computationally efficient posterior inference and sampling. Specifically, our approach results in a prior over neural network weights that assigns high probability mass to models that better align with our domain knowledge, leading to posterior samples that also exhibit this behavior. We show that BNNs using our proposed domain knowledge priors outperform those with standard priors (e.g., isotropic Gaussian, Gaussian process), successfully incorporating diverse types of prior information such as fairness, physics rules, and healthcare knowledge and achieving better predictive performance. We also present techniques for transferring the learned priors across different model architectures, demonstrating their broad utility across various settings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_13410
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bayesian Neural Networks with Domain Knowledge Priors
Sam, Dylan
Pukdee, Rattana
Jeong, Daniel P.
Byun, Yewon
Kolter, J. Zico
Machine Learning
Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) have recently gained popularity due to their ability to quantify model uncertainty. However, specifying a prior for BNNs that captures relevant domain knowledge is often extremely challenging. In this work, we propose a framework for integrating general forms of domain knowledge (i.e., any knowledge that can be represented by a loss function) into a BNN prior through variational inference, while enabling computationally efficient posterior inference and sampling. Specifically, our approach results in a prior over neural network weights that assigns high probability mass to models that better align with our domain knowledge, leading to posterior samples that also exhibit this behavior. We show that BNNs using our proposed domain knowledge priors outperform those with standard priors (e.g., isotropic Gaussian, Gaussian process), successfully incorporating diverse types of prior information such as fairness, physics rules, and healthcare knowledge and achieving better predictive performance. We also present techniques for transferring the learned priors across different model architectures, demonstrating their broad utility across various settings.
title Bayesian Neural Networks with Domain Knowledge Priors
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.13410